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Land Rover confirms end of Defender production

Introduced 30 years ago, the beloved Land Rover Defender won't see 40. Photo by Jay Ramey

It's been all but a foregone conclusion for some time now, but Land Rover has confirmed to our sister publication Automotive News Europe that the aging Defender won't live to see 2020.

Originally conceived as an agricultural machine, the first Land Rover prototype used scavenged Willys Jeep bits left over from World War II. American kids of a certain age may have been captivated by the Land Rover's mystique while watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom back in the '70s. Or perhaps by trips to the British Isles. Or Berkeley.

The successor to the original Land Rover, the coil-sprung Defender, bowed in 1983, though it wasn't named as such until after the 1989 debut of the Discovery. Sold here from 1993 until 1997, when a lack of compliance with Federal airbag standards sent it back across the pond, American-spec Defenders command a pretty penny on the used market. Seriously, go search eBay right now.

Now European regulations are catching up to the classic design. A couple of years back, Land Rover began showing the DC100concepts around, suggesting a direction a future Defender successor might take. Despite reports that a DC100-type vehicle would arrive for 2015 — and make a return to the US — it's off the table now; LR's suggested a successor with heavy aluminum content might be in the cards; likely built on the current Range Rover platform. Given that the company's only sold 561 Defenders in Europe during the first eight months of 2013, the business case isn't incredibly strong. The British military — a perennial fleet customer — is looking in other directions, given that even the armored Land Rover Snatch variant (originally designed for use in Northern Ireland during the Troubles) isn't particularly well-equipped to deal with modern IED threats.

Jaguar Land Rover hasn't yet released a timetable for the cessation of production, though analysts at Bernstein Research suggest that a successor vehicle won't bow before 2019.

Though Magna Steyr has a contract to build Mercedes-Benz's long-soldiering Geländewagen through 2015, its future after that is uncertain. In fact, it looks as if father of the breed's direct descendant, the Jeep Wrangler, will be the last of the classic function-first, luxuries-later utes left standing.